I stumbled across this "review" of World of Goo courtesy the boys at Rock, Paper, Shotgun and nearly ruined my laptop while reading, as I spewed my morning cup of coffee all over the screen. Andrew Doull, IT manager and occasional GameSetWatch columnist, wrote an homage to the game in the form of EA CEO John Riccitiello fan fiction. Yes, fan fiction. Which includes ninjas, an evil plot against our own Brian Crecente, and much raving about those damn 'little guys' who keep managing to pull out big hits:

He knew the capabilities were there. The early iterations of Spore in the EA Advanced Weapons Labs had showed the way. But the cost... they’d had to nuke an escaped Brian Crecente on the corner of 4th Avenue and Broadway. Only a clumsy Gawker clone and a Sims expansion pack which wiped the knowledge of that intersection from the public mind had ensured the cover up. His favourite noodle house had been on that corner. Really great noodles .... He wondered if he should arrange another attempt on Stephen Totilo – the wounds from the Desktop Tower Defense debacle were still fresh. But it was the little guys who were causing the real problems: penetration attacks from TIGSource were getting more common every day and Stallman still lived, protected by the Dckx mafia, despite that outrageous price on his head. He could feel the sand slipping through his fingers like goo through a pipe. How could he identify the next big thing if he couldn’t even see the potential in his own staff?

As Doull says in a comment below the 'review,' "Despite what I wrote, this isn't a specific dig at EA or the game industry. It was more a 'isn't it a great opportunity to be an independent developer, because the tools are now out there to not have to worry about the low level stuff anymore'." It's worth a read just for the mental image of a clone Crecente and a destroyed corner in New York City. Long live the indie game. Review: World of Goo [Ascii Dreams via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]